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This paper establishes a conceptual framework for sustainability in Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), decoupling the field's role as an external enabler of green technology from the internal resource footprint of its own infrastructure. While high-performance scientific modeling actively drives decarbonization across downstream applications, the discipline lacks cohesive standards to mitigate its own surging energy consumption and compounding software technical debt. To address this, the authors formalize internal CSE sustainability around two interdependent pillarsâsustainable computing and sustainable software lifecycle designâand provide concrete operational best practices for scientific computing practitioners.
Scientific computing cannot credibly drive global decarbonization while ignoring its own runaway compute footprints and disposable, unmaintained software ecosystems.
Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) combines expertise at the intersection of engineering, applied mathematics, and computer science to form powerful methods for model-based design and model-based decision support across disciplines. Today, CSE methods and tools have an impact as an enabling technology in the development of increasingly sustainable products, processes, and operations. However, sustainability is rarely considered holistically in the context of CSE itself. This paper develops a perspective on sustainability in CSE by distinguishing CSE as an enabler of sustainability in application domains from sustainability within CSE itself, which rests on two complementary pillars: sustainable computing and sustainable software. We present illustrative examples for these pillars and derive recommendations and best practices for CSE stakeholders. Developing an understanding of how sustainability can create added value in CSE is an important future direction for the field. This calls for a concerted effort within the CSE community to define measurable outcomes and best practices that embed sustainability as a core design principle rather than an afterthought.
